Congratulations to Megan Hicks who was selected for a 2023 SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship – Masters’. This SSHRC scholarship will enable Megan to continue her excellent research while she studies political science at Carleton.
About Megan’s research:
“‘Intrepid’ or the ‘quiet Canadian’ are titles given to Sir William Stephenson, the head of the British Security Coordination during World War II. The B.S.C. was a covert British intelligence organization operating in the United States before it entered WWII. Stephenson’s life carries an air of mystery that has continued through biographies that seem to bring more obfuscation than clarity.
My research focuses on the social relations during the writing and publication phases of The Quiet Canadian, the first biography about Stephenson. Instead of focusing on the revelation of specific secrets, I am focusing on the different actors involved within the web of secrecy.
SSHRC funding allowed me to visit the Churchill Archives Centre at Churchill College Cambridge, where I collected correspondence between the key actors behind The Quiet Canadian. Through an examination of this correspondence, I will highlight the roles of biographer, secret subject, public relations advisor, secretary, publisher and many others. And, how they influence our perceptions of secrecy through biography.
I’m grateful to be working with Professor William Walters, for this research on secrecy. And I hope this research will add to the growing subfield of secrecy studies.”